20130226

A bell tolled and a moment of silence was held Tuesday to honor six people who died 20 years ago in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

The ceremony was held at the 9/11 memorial, where the twin towers were destroyed eight years later. About 50 people, including Mayor Bloomberg and former Mayor Dinkins, attended.

The moment of silence was observed at 12:18 p.m., the time when a truck bomb was detonated below the north tower. The victims' names were read by family members before bagpipers played "Amazing Grace."

More than 1,000 people were injured in the 1993 blast in an underground garage below one of the towers. It was the first dramatic demonstration that "terrorism is theater and New York is the biggest stage," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week. Read more

The Blind Sheikh: A Flashpoint for Terror 20 Years After the World Trade Center Bombing

February 26th, 2013, the 20th anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and injured a thousand, may be the latest proof of George Santayana’s prediction that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Why? Because Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric convicted as the leader of that bombing cell, continues to inspire acts of terror throughout the middle east, including the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last September and the January Algerian hostage crisis — both directly linked to demands by Islamic radicals to “free the blind Sheikh.”An FBI informant who has helped catch some of the world's most dangerous terrorists is coming out of witness protection to warn that a terrorist sheik in prison remains a significant threat to the U.S., as the nation marks the 20th anniversary of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. WNBC-TV's Chief Investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst has more.

Emad Salem is urging the U.S. to keep the ailing 74-year-old sheik Omar Abdel Rahman behind bars and to not transfer him, even as governments overseas continue to press for his release.

Indeed, new evidence was uncovered last summer by ex-FBI asset Emad Salem, proving that Abdel-Rahman, now 74 and serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison, was able to issue a fatwa that helped propel Egyptian Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi to victory – a bit of prison-cell electioneering that prompted an immediate quid pro quo by Morsi demanding Abdel-Rahman’s release.

20130216

Consumer-activist group urges Americans to switch service away from pay TV companies who bring the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera channel into American households. Group will protest leftist bias outside CNN Hollywood on Saturday, Feb 16th.

Rage Against the Media put on a demonstration outside an L.A. appearance of Al Gore to discuss his new book, The Future. Rage was protesting the former Democrat presidential candidate's complicity in providing Al Jazeera full-time channel carriage into American households through selling his liberal current affairs channel, Current TV, to the the Qatari monarchy for an American version of Al Jazeera.Rage protested the professed-environmentalist, Mr. Gore's facilitating the advocacy of Persian Gulf, petrol interests via Al Jazeera's biases. The group was also concerned about the oil-sheikh-owned channel influencing American foreign policy- and molifying social more's against political Islamism molifying society against Islamization and anti-Semitism- as has occurred in a number of European societies, such as France and Belgium.

(6 clips in the playlist- advance via lower middle buttons)The Blaze has more details about the shariah-influenced, Al Jazeera's acquisition of the liberal, environmentally-conscious Current TV. Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America ("CAMERA") director, Ms. Andrea Levin cited for USA Today, a specific example when speaking of one of Al Jazeera Arabic's most popular programs- called “Sharia and Life.”

…hosted by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a former “spiritual guide” of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Qaradawi has called for conversion of Europe and North America to Islam and a Muslim-led genocide of Israel and the Jews.

Earlier this January,TheBlaze covered Al-Qaradawiand his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Jazeera.

A representative for Al Jazeera told Reuters that nine operators will carry the new channel, the largest being Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, ATandT, and Verizon. Time Warner, who carries Current, is taking a wait and see approach for the time being.

Organizer of Rage Against the Media, Karen Siegemund, appealed to the lecture attendees and the TV viewing public to contact their pay TV company and encourage them to not bring Al Jazeera into their households, or risk cancellation of their account.

Protest by "Operation: Can You Hear Us Now?"at CNN Headquarters offices in AtlantaGeorge Mathis in Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Rage Against the Media plans to protest the liberal bias and loss of objectivity in the reportage and programming of CNN outside CNN's Hollywood offices at noon on Saturday, February 16th.

20130215

Is the Obama Administration working to marginalize Zionistic Americans as "unpatriotic" or "unreasonable?" Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post explores Was Chuck Hagel nominated out of spite? 2/15/13

... What is unprecedented is to appoint a high national security official because the president is peeved about someone else.

Politico reports: The president feels personally invested in the nomination of Hagel. The Nebraska Republican is one of the few politicians he’s truly friendly with, and Obama plans to see the fight through, barring some major unforeseen development.

Democrats close to the White House say the typically cool-headed Obama has expressed flashes of real anger at what he sees as a politically motivated GOP fishing expedition that already netted his first choice for secretary of state — U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.
Obama — ticked off by Rice’s treatment and still emboldened by his convincing victory over Mitt Romney — courted confrontation when he tapped Hagel. If true, this is outlandish. The president would imperil national security out of spite?

"Jonathan Tobin has a piece, "Jewish Groups Must End Silence on Hagel" up at Commentary that concludes as follows:

The great irony, of course, is that while Hagel complains about the malicious power of the “Jewish lobby” Jewish organizations, with the notable exception of the Zionist Organization of America, have been almost entirely quiet regarding this toxic nomination of an unqualified bigot for the post of Secretary of Defense. The western progressive-left tends to think that the “Jewish lobby” or the “Israel lobby” or AIPAC, or perhaps just the Jews as a whole, have a strangle-hold over the United States government.

We don’t.

It is a lie - and when influential people such as former Senator Chuck Hagel promote that lie they are spreading an ideological cancer of the sort that can have exceedingly dangerous consequences. This is precisely the kind of thing that most American Jewish organizations were created to oppose and, yet, they are silent. Jewish Democrats today, in the various pro-Israel / pro-Jewish non-profit organizations, seem incapable of mustering the fortitude to stand up to president Barack Obama. By failing to do so they offer cover to Jewish congressional politicians, such as Chuck Schumer or Dianne Feinstein, who themselves remain supine before this president.

By refusing to accept the Hagel nomination without some further inquiry, the Republican Party has offered Jewish groups a golden opportunity to stand up for the best interests of the Jewish people, not to mention the best interests of the American people, through loudly and strongly and insistently opposing this nomination.

If the state of Israel means anything, it means Jewish people standing up for themselves in their own defense. It means the resurrection not just of Jewish autonomy on traditionally Jewish land, but the resurrection of the Hebrew language and the creating and nurturing of Jewish culture in the arts and cinema and literature. What the Israelis have created is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle because they have done something never before seen in the history of the planet. They resurrected the national life of a people that wandered the earth, lost and desolate for two thousand years.

If Israeli Jews can do that, why cannot American Jews grow a spine and stand up for themselves? AIPAC knows that Hagel is a potential nightmare, so why must they remain silent? What good are they if they will not fight the very fights that they were created for to begin with? I understand that it is counterproductive to fight battles that one is doomed to lose, but we are not doomed to lose this one if we would kindly show a little muscle and a little self-respect.

Hagel is bad news and the world-wide Jewish community knows it, but the world-wide Jewish community has no say in who Congress affirms as the Secretary of Defense of the United States. But Jewish Americans do have a say and if we fail to make our voices heard in opposition to a clear and present danger than we let down the Jewish people as a whole.

Something like 80 percent of American Jews, including me, voted for Barack Obama during his first election for the presidency in 2008. Something like 69 percent, without me, voted for Barack Obama during his second election for the presidency last year. Immediately upon securing his second term in office president Obama turned around and thanked his Jewish supporters with a nice smack in the head with this Hagel nomination.

I say that it is time to stand up… long past time, actually."

Pres. Obama has again turned down Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's offer to meet during his visit to Washington during the first week of March. Obama opts instead to meet with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. LatmaTV parodies Obama's intentions in planning his March trip to the Mid-East.

The New York Daily News reported on Tuesday, February 5, that “Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, founder and CEO of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, is being accused of swiping donation money intended for the ‘Ground Zero’ mosque to enjoy a lavish lifestyle.”
Regular readers of my website AtlasShrugs.com will not be surprised at this at all. We are proven right again and again, although the media never admits this. I wrote this in October 2010:

In a piece in Forbes late last year (right before the Ground Zero mosque was announced, Imam and slumlord Rauf extols the riches of fine living. Couture! Sports cars! Cuisine! And the world’s finest prayer rugs (of course). This should solve the riddle of where our two million in taxpayer dollars were going, along with the million from the Dutch government, and his funding from Osama Bin Laden/Al Qaeda-linked Saudi corporation XENEL not to mention our funding his Middle East junkets.

While the tenants in Ground Zero mosque imam’s slums in New Jersey suffer, Imam Rauf enjoys the finest offerings money can buy. Just last week, Rauf was summoned back to court (he didn’t show, of course) as he was cited with more than 200 housing and health code violations over the past two months. A couple of months ago Union City filed suit against Rauf.
Now it comes out that this sinister Islamic supremacist imam was financing this lavish lifestyle not just by ripping off his slum tenants and our taxpayer dollars, but by stealing from Ground Zero mega-mosque donors as well.

20130201

ED KOCH, the voluble three-term mayor who helped bring New York back from the brink of fiscal ruin in the 1970s and came to embody the city with his wry, outspoken style, has died at the age of 88 of heart failure in NYC.

As mayor from 1978 to 1989, the forceful, quick-witted Koch, with his trademark phrase "How'm I Doin?," was a natural showman and tireless promoter of both himself and the city.

New York writer Pete Hamill said in a 2005 discussion of Koch's legacy, "Here was a mayor who was a combination of a Lindy's waiter, a Coney Island barker, a Catskill comedian, an irritated school principal and an eccentric uncle. He talked tough and the reason was, he was tough." In The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune says:

Mayor Ed Koch (Courtesy: Vanity Fair)

It was only three weeks ago when he (Mayor Koch) told me in an interview that he felt President Obama had betrayed Israel with his nomination of Chuck Hagel. “Frankly, I thought that there would come a time when he would renege on what he conveyed on his support of Israel,” Koch said, adding, “it comes a little earlier than I thought it would.”

We published Koch’s articles nearly every week, and it was clear to me, just by the sheer volume of those which focused on Israel, that the Jewish State, and his Jewishness for that matter, were topics that were very close to his heart.

“Why would you expect Israel to cooperate in its intended lynching?” he asked recently in a passionate letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron. He viciously defended Israel’s right to self defense and called out those who displayed hypocrisy in their dealings with Israel on a regular basis.

“I’m of the belief that the leaders of the Jewish community have to do more to make Jews aware, young Jews aware, of the importance of Israel,” he told me in another interview late last year.

It is therefore noteworthy and fitting to point out that besides the ‘Hear o Israel’ prayer, the only other quote that Koch has engraved on his tombstone is the final statement of Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist who was kidnapped and beheaded while in Pakistan investigating Al Qaeda back in 2002.

“My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,” reads the defiant etching, attributed to “(Daniel Pearl 2002, just before he was beheaded by a Muslim terrorist.)”

Koch explained that “the sense of justice that Judaism teaches” was the reason he elected to have the words “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith,” etched on the gravestone he prepared for himself. ...

How befitting that the day of his passing, Feb 1st 2013 comes 11 years to the day after the brutal murder of Daniel Pearl, that icon of Jewish pride. They will forever share a yahrzeit, and in many ways a legacy."

That Mayor Koch died on Daniel Pearl's yahrzeit draws deserved attention to Pearl's legacy- and the Islamic supremacism which so threatens the West and Judaism.

Photo courtesy Hiram 7

The late Christopher Hitchens was honored to present the 2010 Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at UCLA. He consoled Daniel's surviving parents Judea and Ruth Pearl from the last scene of Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt. He only lived until he was a man that which no sooner had his prowess confirmed. In the unshrinking station where he stood. But, like a man, he died. Your cause of grief must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end." Mr. Hitchens then warned about anti-Semitism- particularly within Islam- as the precursor warning of fascism and tyranny.

"Because anti-Semitism is the godfather of racism and the gateway to tyranny, fascism and war, it is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people alone, but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilization- and has to fought against very tenaciously for that reason, most especially in its current, most virulent form of Islamic Jihad. Daniel Pearl's revolting murderer was educated at the London School of Economics. Our Christmas bomber over Detroit was from a neighboring London college - the chair of the Islamic Students' Society. Many pogroms against Jewish people have been reported from all over Europe, today as I'm talking. And we can only expect this to get worse. And we must make sure that our own defenses are not neglected. Our task is to call this filthy thing, this plague, this pest, by its right name. To make unceasing resistance to it. Knowing all the time that it's probably ultimately ineradicable, and bearing in mind that its hatred towards us is a compliment, and resolving, some of the time (at any rate) to do a bit more to deserve it!"

Mayor Koch's public service is remembered in this WABC TV News obituary:

In an interview conducted in 2007, Former Mayor Edward I. Koch reflected on his life and political career, and talked of how he would like to be remembered.
Asked by reporter Tim Weiner: "How do you want to be remembered?" Mayor Koch replied, "I want to be remembered as being a proud Jew who loved the people of the City of New York. And did his best to make their lives better." A documentary about his life opened just prior to his demise. Glenn Whipp writes in the L.A. Times:

Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch died the same day a new documentary about his life and legacy opened in New York."Koch," which will open in Southern California theaters beginning March 1, offers evidence that the combative mayor had mellowed little in his later years. Filmmaker Neil Barsky conducted extensive interviews with Koch in his Manhattan apartment in 2010 and early 2011, where the former mayor, who ruled New York from 1978 to 1989, spoke of his controversial time in office, offering no restrictions on subject matter or time.

Here is the trailer:The N.Y. Times reviews "Koch"

Asked by reporter Tim Weiner: "How do you want to be remembered?" Mayor Koch replied, "I want to be remembered as being a proud Jew who loved the people of the City of New York. And did his best to make their lives better."